The main lesson of the deal with Tripoli is that it’s time for
Washington to be drop the pretenses in dealing North Korea and
Iran.

By Michael Hirsh

05/117/06 "Newsweek" -- -- Here is the official story on Libya,
which Washington removed from its list of terror-sponsoring
states this week. As the Bush administration likes to tell it,
Muammar Kaddafi was scared straight by the U.S. invasion of
Iraq. On Dec, 19, 2003, just six days after Saddam Hussein was
hauled from his spider hole, Kaddafi gave up his life's work as
an international terrorist, renouncing both his weapons of mass
destruction program and his terror tactics. Shocked by the fall
of his fellow dictator, Kaddafi turned into as much of a
quivering stoolie as any doomed character on "The Sopranos." In
a matter of months he exposed the global black market created by
Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan, and he began passing on
intelligence about Al Qaeda and insurgent-linked groups. Now the
autocrat whom Ronald Reagan once called a "mad dog" has become,
in the words of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "an
important model as nations around the world press for changes in
behavior by the Iranian and North Korean regimes.'' And
Kaddafi's about-face is considered by Bush hard-liners to be a
sweet vindication of its policy of confronting bad guys without
quarter.

Here is the real story on Libya, corroborated by multiple
sources. Kaddafi cut his deal in 2003 only after the British and
Americans assured him that Bush would settle for "policy
change"—that is, giving up his nukes—rather than regime change.
Significantly, the agreement went forward only after the
British, who took the real lead in the negotiations, insisted to
the White House that Bush administration hard-liner John Bolton
be barred from the talks. Bolton, who was then U.S. under
secretary of State for arms control, had wanted to add Libya to
the "axis of evil," but Jack Straw, British foreign secretary at
the time, and David Manning, a top adviser to Prime Minister
Tony Blair, prevailed on Rice and Secretary of State Colin
Powell not to do so. Bolton also refused to reassure Tripoli
that the United States did not intend regime change—in other
words, he sought to take essentially the same uncompromising
tack the administration is now pursuing with Iran and North
Korea. The British again resisted, and the White House, which
was then (as now) consumed with Iraq, didn't care enough to defy
Blair on this one. Reason, for once, prevailed over ideology.

Only in one respect does the official story align with the real
story. While Libya remains an antidemocratic and backward
regime, it appears to have genuinely turned away from terror and
WMD. Kaddafi, the terrorist poster boy from the 1980s, is
cooperating fully in the fight against terrorism, according to
Hank Crumpton, the unacknowledged CIA hero of the 2001
Afghanistan war and now the State Department's counterterrorism
chief. So Libya is, for the moment, out of the headlines and out
of our hair. Did the invasion of Iraq frighten Kaddafi into
signing on the dotted line? Probably. But well before then
America was negotiating with the self-admitted murderer of 189
Americans, who died together with 81 others when Libyan agents
downed Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in
1988. The talks with Libya also long predated the invasion of
Iraq, and they began long before Tripoli gave up either its
terrorist or WMD aspirations.

All of which raises an interesting question: just what kind of
"model" is Libya really? It's certainly not a model for Bush's
global democracy campaign; quite the opposite, in fact, although
the administration is now touting the idea that diplomatic
relations with Libya will give Washington more leverage in
pressing for internal reform. (This is blatant nonsense: the
Kaddafi clan, led by the leader's heir-to-be, his son Seif
Kaddafi, will now become richer, and more powerful.) It is also
a stretch to think that the Iranians or even the North Koreans
are going to emulate the strategy followed by Kaddafi, who is
mocked as a barmy Bedouin even by his fellow Arabs.

No, the real model that the Bush administration ought to be
paying attention to is the British one for dealing with
international rogues like Kaddafi. Rule one of this model is: if
you can't destroy regimes—and we can't, not anymore, not after
Iraq—then you try to turn them. You flip them. You hold your
nose and negotiate, preferably from a position of strength. You
have no other choice, unless you want to attack. And we really
don't want to attack: even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
faced with a rebellion from inside his own Pentagon, has been
publicly skeptical about the military options in recent days.

Yet the Bush administration has still not learned the lesson of
its greatest diplomatic success. The most distinctive thing
about this administration—and the source of so many of its
troubles—is its seeming inability to alter its fixed ideas even
in face of new realities. Hence the administration, still
romantically harking back to Ronald Reagan's rejection of
détente with the Soviet Union, continues to cling to the fiction
that one doesn't negotiate terms with evil regimes. Seldom does
the Bush team note that Reagan, Bush's own putative model,
actually did come around to negotiating an understanding with
the "evil empire" in his second term, helping to lead to a
peaceful end to the cold war.

This uncompromising stance is still, in effect, the president's
policy toward both North Korean and Iran. In both cases the
administration is pretending to negotiate through
proxies—through the Europeans in the case of Iran; through the
Chinese in the case of North Korea—while in practice Washington
is essentially issuing ultimatums as an opening bargaining
position. Bush is maintaining his insistence that these regimes
give up the store—agree to surrender their WMD programs—before
Washington will even come to the table. In other words, the
president continues to follow the old John Bolton line.

No one is suggesting there will ever be an easy way out of the
Iran and North Korea problems. But there is ample evidence that,
for several years, both Iran and North Korea have been seeking
assurances similar to what Kaddafi got before they will
negotiate. Flynt Leverett, who served on Bush's National
Security Council in the first term, revealed last week that the
president has squandered previous openings with Tehran. Leverett
says Bush snubbed an offer to talk from Tehran in 2003—passed on
by the Swiss through a "back channel"—mainly because he didn't
want to deal with an "illegitimate regime." In November 2002,
according to The Washington Post, North Korean leader Kim Jong
Il sent a similar message asking for a basic recognition of his
right to survive, offering to resume talks if the United States
"recognizes our sovereignty and assures non-aggression." In
September 2005, after much prodding from China, Washington did
finally agree to a statement of principles in the six-party
format (which also includes Japan, South Korea and Russia, as
well as the United States and North Korea) that contained an
assurance that America has "no intention to attack or invade"
North Korea. But Bush has refused to build on this promise in
bilateral talks, which may be what Pyongyang really wants.

Morally, the restoration of Libya's diplomatic status, and the
rehabilitation of Khaddafi, are pretty hard to stomach.
Strategically, however, these moves were probably necessary.
Even Bush must see that America can't pursue a Michael Corleone
foreign policy—we can't just kill off all our enemies. The
president has but two and a half years left to work things out
with Iran and North Korea. It's time to stop pretending.

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